America no enemy for atom bomb survivor

Published: November 9, 2000 12:00 AM

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Hideko Tamura Snider said she is asked most about how she can forgive, how she can live here, in these United States, after what America did to her.

As a girl, she survived the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, the bomb that took the life of her mother and other relatives. After witnessing so much death and destruction, and after the war, with the support of the Presbyterian Church, she came to live in the United States.

No matter how many times she had heard it, the question of forgiveness always takes her aback.

"It always makes me stop. I'm never sure how to answer it, because I never had any anger or rage. Maybe it was because this happened so early in my childhood (Snider was 10). There isn't anything to forgive -- you had nothing to do with this," Snider said.

Snider has been in Wooster this past week as a theologian-in-residence at The College of Wooster. An alumna of the college with a degree in sociology, Snider has also attended McCormick Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago, where she earned a master's degree in social work.

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America has never been the enemy for Snider, only the land of unequaled opportunity. With an up-for-grabs presidential election hanging in the air, what this country allows was particularly on Snider's mind Wednesday morning. "Think about the beautiful tradition in this country. That didn't exist in Japan. I came here with great hope." she said.

She has spent the past week on campus, speaking to classes, giving larger lectures and preaching in area churches. Wooster professor of history Hayden Schilling uses her book in his first-year seminar class on autobiography in the 20th century. Wednesday, the students heard from the author.

"I've known her since the early 1990s. The book is extremely powerful. Studying the 20th century, quite possibly the most important event was the dropping of the atomic bomb. To hear from someone of a different culture with a different perspective is all the more powerful," Schilling said.

Today Snider provides counseling for chronically and terminally ill patients in a radiation oncology unit at a Chicago-area medical center.

It is the last place she thought she would find herself.

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A long path started with looking for work closer to her children's school. The job was in a hospital, not a place Snider wanted to be anywhere near, only to be reminded of sick people dying from a poisonous black rain. Standing next to a woman in the intensive care unit, hooked up to every possible machine, Snider wondered what she could offer this woman in the way of counsel. Someone told her, "She can hear."

"It was at that moment I realized that which was not possible for who I had to leave behind was now here. This woman was receiving all that modern medicine could offer. I was born again, able to participate in something I could not before," she said.

While at the hospital, she was asked to fill in with patients receiving radiation treatment.

"I was terrified again, but then I saw the resiliency of these people. I saw the burns, the machines -- I nearly froze. But I also understood that which is lethal can also be used for healing, with human guidance," she said.

Meeting a woman who could have been her mother's age battling cancer with radiation therapy gave Snider a mission.

"They are never afraid of dying. Never. It is always the pain of leaving their children. Meeting this woman, I could almost hear my mother's words. They have all been great teachers to me," she said.

Now, along with her counseling work, she enjoys talking about her life experiences -- to her children, students, to anyone with questions.

It was not always that way. In 1996, Snider wrote an autobiography, "One Sunny Day: A Child's Memories of Hiroshima." Previous to writing the book, Snider said talking about what happened to her, and what she saw, could literally make her sick. "Writing the book, I purged my grief. I'm able to talk about this more easily now," Snider said.